About

In the jargon of the computer programmer, a hacker is someone who strives to solve problems in elegant and ingenious ways. NUS Hackers is a student-run organization committed to the spread of hacker culture & free/open-source software. We provide a support system for hackers in NUS who are currently building things (be it for charity, business or pleasure). We also hold workshops, run technical meetups, organize hackathons, and maintain open source code for the NUS community.

What We Do

We have weekly meetups every Friday called Friday Hacks. They include one or two technical talks, followed by a hacking session.

Every semester, we run a series of technical workshops called hackerschool. We also run the Hack&Roll hackathon in the second semester of the academic year. Our coreteam members contribute to events like LadyPy and Software Freedom Day.

We maintain and release open source code for the NUS community (see: our code page). Students and staff who have built NUS-specific projects and can no longer maintain them may come to us to host and maintain their code.

We currently maintain Download@NUS We have a team working with the NUS Computer Centre to host linux mirrors.

Philosophy

We believe that hacking is necessary for good innovation. (In fact, the best computer-related startups and technologies have all come from hackers). As an extension to that, we think tinkering is win-win-win: you learn new things, you get to show off, and you become more attractive to employers.

(Though, honestly, most of the time we hack because we think it’s fun).

Goal

Our long term goal is to build a healthy community of passionate hackers in NUS. We think that this benefits everyone: professors benefit because they are able to source for good programmers; startups and tech companies benefit because they are able to recruit from a central pool; students benefit because they get to meet and learn from like-minded peers (and get opportunities, i.e.: from professors and tech companies).

Management

NUS Hackers is managed by a coreteam of student-volunteers. If you’d like to request a workshop, get us to publicize your code, or ask us a question, we recommend that you send us an email.

Current Coreteam

Advay
[President]
is a Computer Science undergraduate. You can find out more about him here

Varun
is a CS undergrad interested in Programming Languages and Algorithms.
He frequents hackathons and keeps busy with his startup.
He’s a varsity Ultimate Frisbee player and cycles around Singapore on weekends.
He’s reachable at varun@nushackers.org

Johannes Choo
is a Computer Science undergraduate. His secondary interests include classical
languages and philosophy. You can find his code at
github.com/jhanschoo and his blog at
jhanschoo.github.io.

Harish V
is a Computer Engineering undergraduate and tech enthusiast. Loves to explore the realms of software engineering and music.
More information about him here: harishv7.github.io.

Jiayee
is a Computer Science undergraduate trying to build a webpage
(then website) which she can call her own.
Current attempts here: GlacieReiN.

David
is a Computer Science undergraduate who loves learning and learning how to
learn. You can reach him at david@nushackers.org.

Ramu
is an EE undergrad who likes to exercise his imagination and toy with
unconventional ideas. He’s into puzzling, tinkering, making and programming.
Engage Ramu at ramu@nushackers.org.

Deshun
is a Computer Science undergraduate. He likes chocolate.

Herbert
is a Computer Science student who takes more pure math modules than CS.
His first real programming experience was in CS1101S. Since then, he
has tried many things which can be found at
github.com/donjar.

Jethro
is a Computer Science undergraduate, who hacks all things hackable.
He organizes an Emacs meetup
and would love to see you there! You can stalk him here.

Li Kai
is a Computer Science undergraduate that builds websites, then builds some more.
github.com/li-kai.

Suyash
is a Computer Science undergraduate student who loves everything tech, from new home automation hacks to new apps.
He might be new to the world of making things but has been breaking things his whole life.
Feel free to contact him at suyash@nushackers.org.

Rachael
is a Business Analytics undergraduate that loves exploring many fields, such as psychology, AI and design.
She hope to create and recreate more as she experiments with new things. First attempt in creating a website.
Get in touch with her at rachaeltay@nushackers.org.

Francis
is a sushi-loving, rock-climbing, tembusu-staying, mural-painting, vampires-studying, Computer Engineering student, hoping to extend this list as the years go by.

Julius
is a Computer Science undergraduate who also enjoys Aerospace Engineering, Music Theory and History (reflected in his favourite games: Kerbal Space Program and Europa Universalis IV).
You can find his codes here and his website here.

Alumni

Join us

Want to help us spread the hacker culture? You can find out more here.

What is Hacking?

The simplest way to define hacking is: ‘playful cleverness’. We usually take it to mean the act of creating interesting software, but ‘playful cleverness’ may be applied to all sorts of things: life, music, hardware, food. More on this →

Formerly linuxNUS

We were formerly known as linuxNUS, an open source advocate in NUS. We have since changed our name to reflect the shifting nature of our organization: we now spend more time promoting hacking, programming-for-fun, and free/open-source-software use in the NUS community. More on the name change →